Affecting the Rest of the World The Arab Spring can and will affect the rest of the world for the foreseeable future by acting as a representation of the will of the people over the tyranny of unpopular dictatorships. This spirit can already be seen in the populism sweeping through Europe and even in the U.S. Donald Trump (the billionaire candidate who embraced his “outsider” status by pledging to “drain the swamp” (Prupis, 2017) of Establishment politics in D.C.) won the election for president in 2016 over political mainstay Hillary Clinton, who represented both progressive liberalism and the status quo that had been carried on by Barack Obama for the 8 years prior. Trump’s victory was viewed as a moral victory for voters in the U.S. who wanted to send a message to D.C. that they wanted to see the bull let loose in the proverbial China shop: they wanted a president who would shake things up and put them first—not last—in the globalist game (VanGrasstek, 2016). Trump’s victory may have been a hollow victory for them as Trump has been able to keep many of campaign promises thus far—but the spirit of Arab Spring is still alive in the U.S. and those voters on the Left are also embracing it by looking to fresh democratic faces like Ocasio-Cortez for new, inspirational (and socialistic) leadership (Rubinstein, 2018). There is likely to be an increase in populism in the U.S. on both the Right and the Left, as voters reject the status quo—especially with the possibility of a recession looming, states going bankrupt, pensions at risk of being cut, jobs still being offshored, and the middle class continuing to shrink. Plus, more and more protests are occurring: first, there was Black Lives Matter, then there was the Alt-Right, then there was Antifa in response to the Alt-Right, then there was Proud Boys in response to Antifa. More and more factions are being created in the U.S. as tribalism mounts. Whether or not any of it will end in the actual overthrow of an elected leader is unlikely as the police state is quite powerful in the U.S. and it would basically take a foreign war to render the U.S. unstable. That may come sooner than later as the U.S. continues to pick fights with Russia, China, and Iran even as it recently has pledged to remove troops from Syria.

In Europe populism is also alive and well. The “yellow vests” are rioting and protesting in France due to the Macron government’s plan to raise taxes and keep borders open. In England, the British have voted to pull out of the EU and put Britain first just as the Americans voted to do when they elected Trump. Italy has seen its own populist 5-Star movement go head to head with Brussels over how the heavily indebted southern European state would manage its budget issues. Other states in Europe, such as Hungary and Poland are moving away from the centralist principles of the EU towards their own populist movements. Germans have quit supporting Merkel and her reign is coming to a close now as immigration becomes a big issue for them as well. Steve Bannon (one of the driving forces behind the Trump victory in 2016) is attempting to work with other populist leaders in Europe like Le Pen in France and Farrage in England to ensure that the spirit of populism is able to bite back against the authoritarianism of Brussels.

In China and Russia, the current leadership has a strong hold on power and both Putin and Xi are popular. Both want to establish a multi-polar world order to circumvent the rule of the U.S. So there is unlikely to be much uprising in their states that is at all similar to the Arab Spring.

Positive Influences to Derive from the Arab Spring

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Social media played a huge rule in driving the popular revolts against dictators in the Middle East. Social media has allowed people to connect from different neighborhoods and regions of the country and world. It has facilitated the transfer and sharing of information, organization of people, and mobilization of groups with a great deal of felicity and spontaneity. Without social media, these uprisings would likely not have been possible, as the great effort put forward by people to organize and show support for demonstrations was only possible because of the ability to instantly connect, upload and share information online. That is why states like China have taken great measures to control social media, censor the Internet, and limit the extent to which citizens can access information. China knows that information is power and in the Digital Age, social media is the key to the spread of populist information. The power of the Internet and social media in particular is one of the key influences to derive from the Arab Spring. People all over the world are now more and more and aware of how to connect, support, and assist one another in movements like this.
Another positive influence to derive from the Arab Spring is the pressure that is now being put on dictators around the world. Populists are appearing all over the world and pushing back against the status quo, whether that is in England, the U.S., France, Italy, Poland, Hungary, the Netherlands, the Philippines, or Brazil. In much of the world, there is a sense that the people want to take back their own states from the powers that be and put themselves first. Arab Spring may have started in the Middle East but it is not an Arab-only phenomenon. It is a spirit of rejection of totalitarianism—a demand that more countries begin to pay attention to what the people of various nations actually want instead of organization their politics around principles that are not shared or embraced by the people.

There is also the realization that in some cases, populism can be co-opted by the powers that be in order to divert the will of the people away from effective and efficient change towards the aims of the powers that be. This realization is positive because it helps people to be mindful of the risks that are associated with populist movements and how to be careful and conscientious so as to prevent their movement from being hijacked. Some examples of this are in Russia, where the U.S. attempted to back Syrian rebels to oust Assad only to find Russia and Iran step in to prevent further destabilization in the Middle East. In Libya, the popular uprising was augmented by the U.S. and NATO, which ended not in any effective transfer of power but rather in considerable chaos and destabilization. Even in the U.S. with Occupy Wall Street, there was real anger and outrage towards the banks but the movement was ultimately co-opted by the powers that be and reduced to meaningless and empty sloganeering and demonstrations that eventually fizzled out. Now that people know what to be aware of when they engage in any type of protest, they can better guard against their movements being hijacked and steered towards an aim that is not correlated with what they actually want to achieve.

Some Negative Outcomes of the Arab Spring

The biggest negative outcome of the Arab Spring is that it has not consistently led to changes for the better. Libya is now a borderline terrorist state; Gaddafi may not have been beloved but he at least offered stability and order of a kind. Today, the state is a failed state and is largely in the hands of extremists. Iraq is in…